Plutocracy Rising- An Important Discussion

This week Bill Moyers interviewed Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Chrystia Freeland, editor of Reuters Digital and author of a new book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.

At no time in US history have the plutocrats accumulated so much wealth, not even during the Gilded Age. Nor has the gap between the very top incomes and the middle class been so stark. Worse, the gap is growing.

Both journalists spent years covering USSR/Russia and saw first hand the move from communism to a plutocratic society in which a few had extreme amounts of money while everyone else had very little. They both say the US is beginning to look like Russia or a Latin American third world nation. And they’re both worried by what they see happening in the US…as well as the political blindness, political and public intellectual capture, and the corruption of traditional values in which those who have large wealth are viewed as superior beings simply because of their wealth.

Chrystia Freeland asserts that the reason Obama is now so hated by the plutocracy is because he doesn’t appear in awe of them so their feelings are hurt. I’d say it was their egos which were hurt by his failure to hold them special awe. But both reporters say that if the political class were braver, and less dependent upon fundraising, new policies could be developed that mitigated the worst of this inequality that may eventually destroy the US economy.

This is an important discussion that should be watched by every single voter before the next election.

2 Responses

in spite of all the talk of the political separations of the lower middle and upper class:the 99 percent and the 1 percent specifically; this is the first article I read that both makes the point and make sense of Plutocracy as a force to be reckoned with in the American political landscape.
I commend the writers and producers for opening my own eyes and those of other Americans to this creeping evil.
we can look to the Supreme Court’s decision: deciding money is speech,
or even President Obama’s failure to follow up on his promise of campaign finance reform, when it can be argued he discovered how very lucrative is failure to do so would be to his own coffers.
your porn the delete believe the rest of us are stupid, is further Illustrated by the presidential cabinets attempt to dance around the truth of the Libyan attack. Feeding us lies and half truths and continuing days upon days even now with the expectation the Wii the idiot people will believe them.

As long as most American voters believe in and vote for Republicans or Democrats, the country is doomed. We need greens, socialists, and perhaps left-libertarians who are against private corporate power as much as state bureaucratic power.

If only people realized the dramatic improvements made in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. The State Department and the CIA hate him precisely because he doesn’t follow the corporate agenda.